


fly me to the moon

by neptunedemon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Cosmic Ice Skating, Europa, Fluff, M/M, Romance, Space Flight, YOI Secret Santa 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neptunedemon/pseuds/neptunedemon
Summary: Viktor wins a space cruise to one of Jupiter's moons by writing an essay on how the love of his life deserves a trip to the stars.





	fly me to the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Multiple_Universes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multiple_Universes/gifts).



> This is a YOI Secret Santa gift for Mina! Mina, I ended up pinch-hitting for you, but know that I put the love and attention into this as if I'd been your Santa from day 1! I was very excited that you liked scifi and space, so mix that with a little Victuuri romance, and I came up with something that I hope is enjoyable!

"Viktor, I’ve always wanted to go to the stars."

Yuuri had told him that four years ago, before they were married, when they were on a date and walking home under the hazy sky dulled by city lights. There were no stars in the city, but Yuuri had looked toward the skyline like he could see them anyhow and declared that.

That’d been before the world had seen its first space cruises. It had been a bit of surprise when announced, probably because it was something only the elite and unimaginably rich could even consider attaining: tiny vessels of paradise floating in the glittering void - _“a trip for you and your loved ones”_ \- truly seemed only targeted toward CEOs of any of earth's biggest corporations and those who’re stars on the ground.

A trip to the stars was nothing but a pipe dream - until Viktor won two tickets for a space cruise.

_He won!_

When he saw the essay contest ad while perusing a NASA affiliated website - randomly, as it was not something he typically did - he didn't hesitate. For the theme was all too something he'd be capable of: _write to us about a person in your life who deserves a trip to Jupiter’s moon, Europa._

Considering that to Viktor, Yuuri was his moon, and all moons and suns and celestial bodies, this would be easy. And so he wrote, and poured his thoughts into an email document. Viktor didn't consider himself much of a writer, but allusions to Yuuri as the brightest being in the universe and parallels to his intrigue and the vastness of space came easy. He never felt so deft, clever, or tangibly in love than the hour he spent sipping mild coffee and painting the universe in the name of his beloved. Then he reread it for grammar and spelling, laughed at how quaint it was he was entering a contest at all, and sent it in.

It was nearly a matter forgotten when he got a call two months later.

 

＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚☀˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

 

"Yuuri," Viktor said upon hanging up the phone.

"Who was that?" Yuuri was folded into their sofa and on his tablet, swiping along some game. Or maybe he was reading an article. Viktor couldn't see, and honestly he couldn't quite think beyond knowing that here was his Yuuri, a Yuuri who was yet to realize they were going to the stars. The vast reaches of space, that their bodies would be bound to the safety of a star ship while they blasted faster than light across the cosmos. He was yet to know that the whimsical, romantic comment he'd made many years ago was about to be born to life.

Viktor hadn't answered and so Yuuri looked up, nudging his glasses and looking at him with concerned pondering. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, very," Viktor said. His mind scrambled; he thought he ought to surprise him a better way. Over dinner, good wine - or better, his birthday! Their anniversary?

Yuuri was expectant after that comment. He set his tablet aside. Morning light streamed in through their parted curtains, tickling light through Yuuri's hair. He still wore his sleep clothes, and so his hair was still mussed with sleep as well. He was sweet, innocent, unaware, and it was Saturday - a normal Saturday, as normal as one's day ever was when they were with the love of their life.

So by those thoughts, Viktor was decided, and he dropped to the sofa next to Yuuri and grabbed his hands. "I did something," he said. "I entered a contest."

Yuuri glanced at his phone, now discarded on the coffee table, then his eyes moved back to Viktor with a little more understanding. "You won?" he asked with a voice still so naive. He’d no idea what he'd won. Viktor was filled with the static of anticipation.

"Yes, I won." he felt the smile on him that he could not help. Yuuri narrowed his eyes; there was still excitement in the trace of the smile, but suspicion now, as if he knew his husband had gotten them into something quite extraordinary indeed.

"What did you win us, Viktor?"

 

＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚☀˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

 

Europa was coincidentally a wonderful choice for them, for reasons equal to both its beauty and its excursion options. The moon was practically all ice, plains of rough, aged frozen-over seas. _They_ understood ice - they owed it a great deal.

Upon their departure day, Yuuri was quite a state of nerves - but the good kind, the kind that one should have when leaving their own planet. Viktor found himself struggling to know whether his nerves were for that, or if he were insane enough to only have concern for this going right enough to make Yuuri happy.

It was probably both but much easier to focus on the latter.

Their starship was a vessel meant for much smaller cruises, homing 50 patrons and 30 crew. Many were couples, as well as another pair of contest winners. They all shared the looks of excitement and anxiety as their ship rumbled a drone that was accompanied by a voice letting them know lift-off was coming.

Yuuri held tight to Viktor's hand; Viktor held tight back.

Though most of the trip would be nearly unnoticeable by them, for safety reasons and others pertaining to the challenges of atmospheric departure and entry, they were asked to be strapped in seats at starboard for takeoff and landing.

They were all there together then, in a wide room with low ceilings and a window staring up at their great fates. It was better this way though, Viktor thought, to be together. Next to him Yuuri whispered, "I’m terrified, excited but terrified."

"Me too."

"No Gs in here," the captain reminded them over an intercom. "We will remain in terrestrial stasis, equilibrium, you'll only notice moments of discomfort as life support makes its quick adjustments to account for the conditions outside. No pain of course."

Yuuri's hand held tighter.

The thrusters burned hot somewhere beneath them - they were _so_ loud, and the ship trembled as it lifted from the ground. They rose to meet the sky, and all around patrons were either cheering or gasping or remaining completely silent, pushed quiet by awe as familiar blue turned to violet. The violent went plummy, a little grey, and still the ship hummed a steady vibrato, singing the mechanical and computational songs of many ancestor ships and rockets that'd left the earth.

Then there was a dip in the color to something even darker. They were all blind beyond that, and now no one was talking - nor breathing. The thrusters kicked off.

Viktor felt his stomach do a small flip. The hair raised on his neck. Somewhere, someone gasped. The ship felt to be falling backward, suddenly giving up its forward pressures to stop a single peaceful moment before returning to descent.

The thought alone made Viktor's stomach flip again.

They did not fall though, and the specks of stars peaked through the haze. More, then more, until they were staring at the fabric philosopher's once dreamed about.

"Beautiful!" Yuuri gasped. Others were exclaiming now, too - someone was crying even, and there was a great applause.

The captain announced something over the intercom but Viktor didn't even catch it. He was watching Yuuri’s face haloed against the backdrop of stars beyond the windows. Viktor’s heart filled with an unmatchable love - he just wanted Yuuri to be happy, for if Yuuri was happy then he was, too.

Yuuri turned to him, eyes glistening with the emotion of all the universe presenting itself to him, Viktor supposed. But Yuuri asked, “You love this, right? Are you happy we’re doing this?”

Viktor was a lucky man. “Yes, Yuuri, yes yes yes.”

The answer had Yuuri blushing and ducking his head into Viktor’s shoulder.

The captain was still stating official-sounding things, but a crewmember had come to relieve them from the starboard, and people around them were starting to stir and unfasten their restraints to rise from their seats. “Now what?” asked Viktor. “Where would you like to go?”

“You can choose too, you know.” Yuuri grinned. “ _But_ I noticed some very intriguing options on the restaurant menu...”

“Yes,” Viktor took his hand, happier than he could say to oblige. “Let’s eat.”  


＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚☀˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

 

Their flight across the solar system was splendid and as smooth as they’d been promised. “Thanks to the EmDrive,” the engineer staff told them. “Microwave propulsions.” And then they were cutting faster than starlight. They stopped for an hour past Earth's moon, letting its gravity guide them like riding an ocean swell. They all gathered at starboard again for that, to awe and wonder at its soft craters in dust.

It took three earth days for them to reach Europa. The moon grew through their windows. Unlike the smooth round craters visible on Earth's moon, Europa had slashes across its grey and browned surface. Ridges, Viktor thought, or icy caverns, though it simply looked like ventricles stretching across the planet in haphazard fashion, connecting the moon from one end to the other.

The moon loomed closer, and closer, and the details grew finer, the veins larger and more real. Viktor looked at Yuuri, who seemed quite fine staring out their little bedroom porthole window, and smiled.

"I still can't believe that we're here because you wrote that... thing," Yuuri said, a little pink warming his neck. He’d read it of course. Viktor thought he'd be too embarrassed to let Yuuri read such a thing, but when he'd reread it himself to wonder at how he truly convinced a panel of judges to put them on a space cruise, he was only reaffirmed by the truths he'd detailed, however lavishly. So he'd been proud to forward the essay to Yuuri.

Viktor took Yuuri by the arm and gently tugged him from the window. "Enough of the moon," he said. "We’ll be there soon, and I know our suits will be thermal, but I cannot imagine the cold we'll be in. It makes me cold now."

Still thoughtful, and so not answering, Yuuri pulled the blankets up just enough to scoot under them and press himself against Viktor. "I’m a little nervous," he said. "I can't imagine what antigravity will feel like."

"Well, not quite -"

"Oh, almost antigravity, you know what I mean."

Viktor grinned, and his eyes idly fell back to the window he'd just eagerly nudged Yuuri from. They looked to be circling around the moon, though Viktor knew they were cruising toward it.

"I’m excited to see you out there on the ice," Viktor said. "Moon ice. Jupiter’s moon ice."

"What a once in a lifetime chance," Yuuri said. "I hope I don't forget how to skate back on Earth after this."

"Oh, you will." Viktor nodded assuredly, running a hand up and down Yuuri's side. He stared at the ceiling now. It was a pale purple - the whole ship, all the rooms and cafeterias and halls were adorned with color and plants and aesthetic little fixtures, and Viktor understood it was to help keep from the dreariness of having no vibrancy beyond one's window. He appreciated the touch. "But the world can't be without Yuuri Katsuki, you see. So they'll have to start a new sport - cosmic skating."

Yuuri's laugh was warm and light and happy, and infectious to Viktor's chest.

"I will be the founder of that sport, as always was my destiny."

"Then what part have I played in your destiny?"

Viktor rolled to his side. He nuzzled into Yuuri's neck, felt Yuuri shiver when he hummed, "Hmm?"

But Yuuri's voice was soft when he said, "My muse, of course, the inspiration for it all."

They were being funny, they were joking, but there were of course truths in those words and Viktor only answered, "I love you," and felt the significance of the words out here among the stars, where any words spoken were few and far between when measured against the great and regal silence.

"I love you, too," Yuuri added to their place among the cosmic strip. "I really, really do."

 

＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚☀˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

 

The descent onto the moon required them to be strapped back into their seats. They had their large view out the starboard window again, and their stomachs all rose to their chests and then to their throats in time with the rise of the moon's surface to meet them.

The craft shuddered far away, not enough to be a worry and nothing more unfamiliar than what they'd experienced leaving their planet days before. People whispered, their voices owning more excitement than they had before, as they'd all seemed to learn to love something nearer and dearer during their time among the stars. The clarity way out in the void had a way of clearing the mind, lining up what was important and not, and fear seemed so insignificant now. The quelling anticipation, a slight anxiety - that was fit, but nothing more. The atmosphere at starboard was bright with the smiles of its passengers that watched out the window as the veins of Europa finally, clearly showed themselves as caverns and discolored strips of ice and splays of sediment across the frozen crust.

"Incredible," Yuuri said, and Viktor nodded to that. His stomach swooped low as their descendant burned into the moon's thin atmosphere and life support adjusted.

"Never seen so much ice. Over the whole moon, it's hard to believe."

Then there was a gasp as their view adjusted and Jupiter, large and impossibly near, came into view. It seemed to rise out of the dark, only half visible to them - the reddish streaks woven around it were such a contrast from Earth's lively green and swirls of blue and white. Comprehending how large the planet was to appear so huge yet remain so far away was boggling.

After minutes, which were spent with eyes scanning every centimeter beyond the thick glass between them and the cold alien air of the moon, an announcement broadcasted around the ship to declare they had landed safely; patrons were free to move about the ship again and to pay attention to the times of their excursions.

At the proper hour for their ice skating excursion, Viktor and Yuuri met several other passengers in a small room toward the back of the ship, near the airlocks and hangar bay. The room wasn't decorated in color and filled with fanciful things; instead, one end of the room was just closets with doors wide open to reveal rows of spacesuits, helmets, and other equipment, neatly tucked away. The room’s walls were brimming with diagrams. They were all of safety precautions, facts about lowered gravity's effect on the body, survival techniques.

Viktor swallowed hard reading the measures taken if the glass on your helmet cracks but was interrupted by a swoosh of doors opening. Crewmembers wheeled in several large, metal crates, lined them up against the far wall, and turned to the passengers who'd instinctively backed to one side and watched.

"Hello!" a cheery fellow greeted them all. He clasped his hands. "I’ll be guiding your skate excursion today. and we'll be out there in no time, I promise, but I have a lot of safety and legal measures I’m required to go through, so if I could have all your undivided attentions, that would be great." He gestured with one hand to the containers. The crew members who'd remained quiet were opening them and shuffling through, glancing briefly between the passengers and contents of the crates as they dug their hands into them. "These contain our skates, and after we get those space suits hanging up on, we'll fit you all."

The space suits were simple enough to put on - they were guided through it by example, but it was a garment of its sort one would imagine, tight and sealed off to the air. Viktor's skin prickled underneath its fabric that felt of polyester and silk, though they knew it was woven nanotech, an extreme and brilliantly efficient technology.

"Nothing like the space suits of the early days, right?" their instructor joked. "Skating wouldn't be possible with those."

"Viktor, help me get my arm in this wretched thing," Yuuri gasped as he missed the sleeve again. They were in a dressing room with their regular clothes discarded over a bench. Yuuri's bare arm hung out of the sleek grey of the suit, and the sleeve dangled like loose skin, evading Yuuri's reach for it. Viktor laughed, took hold of both Yuuri's flailing arm and the sleeve and guided him through the hole, stretching it enough so that he could slip his hand through. "Oh, this feels strange," he giggled. "It feels cool - like, cold. Is that right?"

"Because they aren't activated." Viktor glanced the little panel on the sleeve over his wrist.

The suit rain over their hands and feet to make gloves and socks - they were surprisingly form-fitting, but Viktor's skin still continued to tingle and he hoped the adjustments they'd been taught would take away that discomfort. His neck itched where the fabric reached up. It nearly brushed his jawbone when he turned his head.

Fully dressed now, Yuuri stepped back. He spread his arms apart and looked down at himself and then at Viktor. "We look like aliens."

"I know, I feel silly." Viktor brought his wrist up and pressed one of the buttons embedded in - the one resembling earth, just a simple symbol and nothing more - and he shivered with the change. The suit went from a sleek grey like seal flesh to unfurl pale, luminescent greens and blues, like his body was a pale imitation of earth. Across the room Yuuri gasped, his suit the same. The itchy, tingling feeling was gone and replaced with warmth. Not a smothering, hot warmth, though - it felt like standing outside on a beautiful, sunny spring day, with just the perfect breeze cutting through. It was a little disorienting to feel standing there in a blank dressing room. There were several other buttons - one that imaged just the suit symbol, the default setting; an exclamation point for extra life support; and several other symbols for environmental conditions and life support, all which they'd been informed to not worry about.

Their helmets were supposed to sync with the suits; Viktor supposed his head being immersed in the spring day illusion would help this not feel quite so strange.

"Wow," Yuuri said, and Viktor finally got a good look at him standing there in a suit shifting those earthly colors. He was beautiful - despite being purely of nanotech, a construction of science and engineering, to Viktor's naked eyes the suits may as well be enchanted stitchwork, and Yuuri looked magnificent, like some prince of Sci-Fi novels.

"I won't be able to kiss you out there," Viktor said aloud, only just realizing. It was silly but he'd been putting weight on the notion of kissing Yuuri on Europa.

Yuuri laughed, probably realizing too Viktor's romantic, naive little heart, and stepped the distance between them closed. Yuuri kissed him, briefly on the mouth, and pulled away all too soon to say, "You will have to earn more by being a good pair skate to me today."

Viktor bit his lower lip, not thinking much beyond how Yuuri's eyes were the only stars he'd ever need when he looked at him like that, but managed to say, "If that's all I have to do, then you better brace yourself."

 

＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚☀˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

 

The thing about imaging skating on one of Jupiter’s moons is that there's actually no point really imagining it. Because it's most definitely going to be beyond and entirely different from anything one would expect.

It was.

In both glorious and awkward ways.

It was beautiful and strange to glide across the ice, lifting off with any force applied to the ground. There was a struggle to line one's skates with the ground in time for when they met it again, but when they managed it, they could skate arcs and turns, though these also weren't without unprecedented takeoffs. Without much worrying of a fast fall, even the clearly less-experienced passengers who'd chosen this activity were skating like Viktor and Yuuri.

They made ribbons with their movements through thin air and across rough ice - their blades, designed to cut through the tougher terrain of moon ice - kept them from barreling forward into flying somersaults.

It was cirque du solei on ice, with actors in glittery suits feigning earth and the thin, pale atmosphere stretching above them to weakly conceal the stars. Jupiter still sat beyond the horizon, their only audience.

Cosmic ice skating. It’d been a joke, but Viktor found he was rather in love with it.

He and Yuuri held hands, as Viktor was sure to keep that pair skating promise, and thus they often caught themselves tugging one another off the ice and spinning in slow revolutions through the air, laughing wildly, trying not to dizzy each other into sickness, until one of them caught blade against the ice and could lead them into another sweep.

It was like dancing through a dream - though simulated earth pressed into Viktor's skin and he breathed oxygen inside the glass bowl on his head - the slowness of their falls back to the moon's ice felt like a slowness in time. Viktor could skate out there for hours with Yuuri, and when he'd lost his breath a moment he could happily take a turn simply watching Yuuri attempt to reproduce the jumps that earth's aggressive gravity both held them up to and pulled them down from.

"A deca-axel," Yuuri cheered as he touched back to the ice after a long-descending twirl. "A new record, I’m unbeatable."

Despite how haphazard and silly they all were, throwing themselves across ice and foreign ground and spiraling like aliens in fits of madness - which was what they were, he thought wryly - Viktor noticed some of the others begin to slow their own waltzes and watch them. A few clapped when Yuuri announced his deca-axel, which sent stains of red up his cheeks.

"Don’t ignore your fans," Viktor mocked, and Yuuri didn't answer. He pursed his lips, brows knit in a concentration Viktor was quite familiar with. And then Yuuri grabbed his hand, the false sunny warmth of the inside of their suits almost mimicking the bliss of human touch, and whisked him into long lopes across the ice until they were skidding across it hand and hand again.

 

＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚☀˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

 

 

"It feels silly to thank you for winning us this, but thank you," Yuuri whispered to the dark as they laid down for bed. Viktor sat up against the headboard, unwilling to let the day end yet, and Yuuri propped himself on his lap and played with the collar of Viktor's shirt.

No stars twinkled in their window, because they were still on Europa and would be for another day. But its horizon met their eye line and they could see Jupiter. Wide and large and silent. Ominous, too, but safe - like a new parent, and they were the new children, and they'd yet to grow accustomed to one another's presence.

"I’ve told you you're the one to thank."

"Does space live up to all the things you wrote?"

"I didn't write about space, I wrote about you."

"Well, you alluded to me and the cosmos both, so you technically did. All that stuff about starlight and the space between. What do you think now?" Yuuri's eyes burned into his. Viktor reached for his cheek.

Stroking a finger down, he said, "I didn't expect the mixture of starlight and ice and your twirling like you were borne of it all to be something I ever actually would witness, so no, I don't think words I’d write could ever truly do that justice."

"Not exactly what I asked," Yuuri muttered through a blush.

"Really?" Viktor's fingers traced his jaw; he let Yuuri shiver and press into the touch a little, and then lightly took his chin.

Too weakened to argue, Yuuri mumbled, "Love you,” and Viktor, despite being someone so lost to the stars and planets and how they mirrored the facets of the man that he loved, found no trouble in whispering against lips, “Love you too,” and then kissing Yuuri, while all the universe hung like drapes against the singularity of that love - steady, quiet, and soft.


End file.
